Mission / Purpose

Most of the organization's resources are devoted to casework, as the cases and causes drive our push for reform.

IPNO currently accepts applications for legal representation from prisoners in Louisiana and Mississippi who claim that they are factually innocent. At the beginning of the 21st century, Louisiana, with over 36,000 prisoners in the state correctional system, had the highest incarceration rate of any state in the country, with 857 prisoners for every 100,000 people. Mississippi was second, with over 24,000 prisoners and 762 prisoners for every 100,000 people. If we were to assume that the system was mistaken only 1% of the time, that still means that more than 600 innocent people are behind bars in these two states alone.

Because in the Deep South so little case evidence is actually preserved after trial by the authorities, IPNO not only litigates cases where DNA testing will resolve the issue of guilt or innocence, but also cases where no such short-cut to exoneration exists. The case of ten out of the fifteen innocent clients that IPNO has freed either did not involve DNA testing because it was not possible or involved DNA as only part of the evidence of innocence needed to exonerate the client. To read about the prisoners that IPNO has exonerated, go to their profiles.

IPNO's current casework priority areas are cases in which the person was a juvenile when arrested (as part of our Juvenile Initiative) and cases in the Hurricane Katrina and Rita-affected regions in which DNA testing could be dispositive of guilt or innocence.

IPNO conducts a preliminary screening of applications reviewing them using nationally accepted indicia of wrongful conviction. On these factors, it is determined which cases will be advanced for further review. The process is lengthy: a non-DNA case may wait for several years for investigative resources to be available in this stage. For further details on how we take cases, click here.

IPNO only accepts applications directly from prisoners convicted in Louisiana and Mississippi and only by mail. To request an application, the prisoner should contact IPNO.